The house that we were all hoping that would sell, didn’t. The owners, developers were too greedy. It was on the market for $400K, the highest offer was $380K, and that was generous, ’cause the quality of the house wasn’t that good. So the owners rented out the two unit property to a working class family and some guys.
With the family came a new crop of kids. Now I can’t say for sure that the crop of kids all live in the house. As these things go you have cousins, playmates, what have you who join the kids who do live there. They have been playing with the crop of kids who normally play on their block. 90% of these kids are boys. Little boys. So you have a gaggle of rough housing, ball throwing, ball bouncing, fight starting, highly competitive boys. One block cannot hold all this energy.
Most of the families on the block, I speak of, have been there for a while. Majority of the boys’ families are home owners and longtime residents. They know better than to run into their neighbors’ yards and tree boxes while playing. Yet, with the arrival of the new family this ‘knowing better’ seems to have gone out the window.
It is true that it takes a village to raise a child. It takes several adults who happen to be outside observing this bad behavior to yell at the kids. Apparently one lone adult isn’t enough. By yelling, I mean asking “what are you doing?” or saying loudly, “get out of Mr. X’s yard” or “why don’t you play over there?”. Kids.